Featured titles
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All Our Lord's Men, a novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya (2005)
Shortlisted for the Big Book National Literary Award (2006, Russia)
Rights sold: Finland - SILTALA, France - GALLIMARD, Germany - HANSER, Hungary - MAGVETO, Iran - SALESS PUBLICATIONS, Korea - EULYOO, Romania - HUMANITAS, Russia - EKSMO, AST, Serbia - PAIDEIA
Ever since this book appeared in Russia, it was an overwhelming success. Each Ulitskaya's book is a case by itself, a step forward and towards the new territories of prose. Similar to her other title published lately (Daniel Stein), in this work the Author matures towards a kaleidoscopic vision of destinies of different people, a wide tapestry of the modern life composed of the lives of people around her. In her interviews, the Author on several occasions stated that she «never invents anything», and that all her plots, no matter how extraordinary and fantastic they may seem, happened to somebody she knows: she just manages to penetrate the pattern of their lives. This book is exactly the result of such God’s eye vision of modern Russia, being a novel composed of various episodes that constitute an integrated plot, giving a complex picture of Putin’s Russia, both vivid and unique. Musing, erotic, tightly woven and acute – truly it is staple Ulitskaya’s prose at its’ best.
“The author remains in the middle, exactly midway between the observer and the observed. He ceased to be of interest to himself. Basically he remains part of the observed, not involved and selfless. What a wonderful game can start when the distance from one’s own becomes so far! …
The small people of our Lord observe all this looking up. They admire, fight, kill and kiss. Paying no attention whatsoever to the author.”
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Discarded Relics, collected essays by Ludmila Ulitskaya (2012, NF)
Rights sold: Germany - HANSER, Hungary - MAGVETO, France – GALLIMARD, Russia - AST, Serbia - ARHIPELAG, World English (excerpt, magazine) - GRANTA, Finland (excerpt, magazine) - GRANTA/OTAVA
Non-fiction is a new form for Ludmila Ulitskaya, a new approach to the reader. For the very first time in her literary carrier, she speaks with reader in first person.
The book comprises:
- Ulitskaya's essays on topical issues in literature, art, religion, and politics;
- Reminiscences of friends and family, mostly departed;
- Stunning self-biographical account of her personal fight against breast cancer;
- Series of a very personal, but also philosophical meditations which move beyond the limitations of one individual and their personal destiny. Ulitskaya reflects on the end of life and the inevitability of death. These are her thoughts on an issue which disquiets each of us, demanding that we address it, while disconcerting us with its insolubility.For most readers, Lyudmila Ulitskaya is primarily a writer of novels and novellas, a narrator of tales about other people. Her novels have spoken to the hearts of millions and given her the moral right to speak now not about other people’s histories but her own. Of late she has become for many not just an entertaining storyteller but a kind of confessor and confessional writer. Religious concerns are an important strand running through the entire text.
In recent years we have witnessed another qualitative change. Ulitskaya in Russia is no longer only a novelist but a commentator, responding to major events of our times. She is a guide for young, and not-so-young, people in the capitals and provinces as they find their way in life, measuring their actions against moral standards.
She envisaged and has created this book as a quiet, profound conversation with each individual reader. It is simply her voice from the pages of a book, the trenchant working of her mind, the vivid nature of her images, the power of her metaphors, the irony with which she express herself, - in short, the features which make her style unique and draw people to her.
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